She's That Founder
097 | How One Firm Went From “12% Growth” To Industry Domination—By Finally Getting Honest
Real talk. If your strategic plan is to just grow revenue by 15% next year, you don't have a strategy. You have a wish with a percentage sign.
Hey, hey, hey. Welcome to She's That Founder Thursday edition. These are the quick rants kick in the pants, velvet boot moments that represent me standing in the future, pulling you toward the even stronger, better, more powerful leadership version of yourself with AI as your copilot.
And today we are talking business strategy. So here is what set me off. This week I was working with a professional services firm, and I can't name names because NDAs are real, but picture this a room full of brilliant people each at the top of their field, we sit down for what they called their annual strategic planning session, and this is the first time I'm joining them as their business strategy coach.
And they shared with me where they were presented their first slide and it said increase revenue by 12% year over year. And I was like, that's it. That's the strategy. Of course, I didn't say this out loud, but I was thinking 12% of what exactly.
Doing more of what you're already doing. Hoping the same clients magically spend more praying that market conditions would stay exactly the same or be better so that you could incrementally tick upward. It wasn't a strategy, it was a math problem in a business suit.
And so here's what I did. I pushed back. Hard. I said, okay, uh, why 12%? What does that unlock? If it's unlocked? What does your firm look like five years from today?
If everything goes perfectly, what changes? And then what do you actually want collectively? What's the difference you wanna make? What's the impact? What will be different for yourself, for your employees, for your clients, for the world, for your community? If you get what you want.
This is where it got interesting.
It turns out when we actually had the conversation, when we stopped hiding behind percentages and safety and started talking about their actual vision, didn't want 12% more revenue. They wanted to completely own their specialty in the market. They wanted to be the name.
Everyone thought of in their field across the country. They wanted to expand into a practice area that they had been scared to touch, and they wanted to build something that would outlast them, that could be handed down to partners in the future. But none of that was in their strategic plan because they'd convinced themselves that increasing revenue by 12% was strategic thinking.
And that's not strategic thinking. It's safe thinking. And it's a trap that so many founders fall into, especially when you've bootstrapped something from the ground up. Because here's the thing about real strategy.
Real strategy is mother effing uncomfortable. It requires you to name what you actually want, which means risking that you might not get it, that you might not know how to get it, that you might make everybody else uncomfortable, that you might not have all the answers.
I mean, it's way easier to hide behind incremental, safe goals that sound responsible. But let me be clear what we're talking about here.
Planning is tactical. It's the what and the when we're launching this service in Q2, hiring two people in Q3. Updating our website in Q4. That's planning and it's absolutely important, and it marries up nicely with strategy, like they go hand in hand.
But strategy is different. Strategy is the why and the who. It's the direction, it's the North star, it's the, we're becoming the firm that completely transforms how this industry thinks about X, or we're making a life changing difference for founders who are drowning in their own success.
That's my strategy, by the way. You need both, but most founders are drowning and planning and starving for strategy. Incremental goals keep you incremental. They don't force you to rebuild systems to rethink your business model or invest in what would truly, truly change the game for you. They just keep you doing slightly more of what you're already doing, which may be great at this moment in this stage of growth for your business.
But the firms that actually transform, they stop playing small with their strategy. They get honest about the audacious vision and then, this is the key, they work backward from that to figure out what has to change.
Now for that firm that I mentioned. Once they admitted they wanted to dominate their space, everything shifted all of their hiring plans. They threw 'em out the window and started over many of their business systems. We took down to the nuts and bolts and started over. Like we tore down their business while it was still operating and started from scratch to rebuild it because they realized that their current systems wouldn't allow, wouldn't support that vision.
Their team structure did not work. Their service delivery had to evolve so much had to be documented and delegated. Even their office layout changed, and none of that would've happened if they stuck with 12% growth. It also made everybody really freaking nervous, but also extremely excited and enlivened and proud to go after the goal.
So here's your mindset tweak. Stop asking. How much more can we make? Start asking real questions, like real strategic questions. Who do we wanna make a life-changing difference for as a service business? What do we wanna be known for? What do you wanna own?
What space? What corner of the market is yours and yours alone? What impact do we wanna have that goes beyond our bank account and across all the different stratas, your own in leadership, across your teams, your clients, your community, and beyond. What impact do you wanna have that goes beyond your bank account?
And then what has to be true for that to happen? That is strategy in a nutshell, and I will be real with you. It is very difficult to see without outside help, especially when you're going much bigger. So I get it. Big visions are scary. vulnerable as a leader to say out loud what you really want.
And there's always the voice that says, who are you to want that much? How dare you? But here's what I know. After 23 years of doing this work, the founders who change industries, who build legendary companies who actually get to step back and lead instead of drowning in operations, they are not the ones playing it safe with percentage increases. They're the ones who got honest about the biggest possible goal, as they say the BHAG, the big hairy audacious goal. Something that is almost beyond your imagining. And then they built everything to match it.
They pushed all their chips onto the table and bet big. So if this hits home for you, I'm inviting you to download 10 ways AI will make you a better leader at hellodawn.live/10ways. There is a whole section on using AI to pressure test your strategy and make sure you're not just doing math when you should be doing vision work.
Your business doesn't need another incremental goal. Incremental goals are for your teams in your departments. For the folks that are running pieces of the business below you, but it does need you to get honest about what you're actually building.
Look forward to future episodes where we talk more strategy. It's my favorite thing to do. And until then, go think bigger, believe it's possible, and go be that founder. All right, Lovie. see you next time.
